How I Learned About Car Sleeping

Back in the US from a year of enforced albeit ever so pleasant pandemic confinement in Mexico, I headed through flyover country. Comfortable and safe in my Prius, I searched for known and unknown sites and sights. Soon I noticed something I had seen little of in my many years of traveling by air, train, bus, and car throughout the country.

Car windows were darkened, forbidding me from seeing who sat in the drivers seat. Vans had non-see through windows, allowing those inside to lounge in their makeshift bedrooms, shower, or write a critique of Microsoft’s latest offerings.

I’d come to expect a bit of this.

Sitting alone in my casita’s living room during the year, I’d been missing having a dog, maybe a Golden Retriever to lean over and pet, stroke her soft furry head, and offer a treat. Knowing such an acquisition was an illogical one for various reasons, I settled on TikTok. Soon its’ algorithms were showing me not just dogs of all breeds, but a cat, squirrel, and horse tossed into the mix along with lots of videos of folk living in their cars.

Yes, the young explorers, the middle-aged dropouts and the retired were traveling and living in their cars, vans, converted buses, or recreational vehicles of innumerable sorts. Some chose vintage rigs, redoing them with laminate flooring and farm sinks. Others turned old school buses into living quarters while another group delighted viewers with beach scenes from the back of their vans.